From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [132]
“Yeah?” Prew grinned.
“Yeah,” Maureen said. “And them other three,” she said, pointing at the three fat, gum chewing ones, “are Moe, Larry, and Curly.”
Prew laughed out loud. “You’re a character yourself.”
Maureen stared at him quizzically. “I’m goin to buy them a checkerboard after Payday, if they promise to quit chewing gum. Theres four or five more back in the second waiting room, if you want to meet them too. But I wouldnt be surprised they all asleep.”
“Dont disturb them.”
“Why now, thank you. Dear,” Maureen said. “Thats sweet of you.”
“Dont mention it.”
“Well,” she said, “do you see anything you like? or not? I aint got all night.”
“I like them all. Especially Moe, Larry, and Curly,” he said, looking back across the room now at Lorene.
“The Princess is purty, aint she?” Maureen said.
“Oh,” he said. “So-so.”
“You mean you think she’ll do,” Maureen said. “You mean she’d be all right. In a pinch. A good hard pinch.”
“Thats it,” Prew said.
Maureen stood up suddenly and smoothed her dress.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me, Dear,” she minced. “I can plainly see I will be of no use to you much. I seem to lack that virginal quality so profitable in a good whore.”
“Nobody seems to like her around here,” Prew said. “Why is that?”
“Call it professional jealousy,” Maureen said. “For lack of a better name.
“Well,” she said, “much as I hate to dash off I am afraid you must allow me to tear myself away. Much as I adore your company, there is still business to attend to. Minerva is opening the door to let someone in, and as Mother Kipfer says, business must come before pleasure.”
“Then dont let me detain you,” Prew said, “from your duty.” He grinned, flatly because all this had stopped being funny, but broadly because he liked this one and did not want to hurt her any more than he had to to get free of her.
She flashed him back a grin that understood his own completely, and he watched her teeter on her meatless hips across the room, walking on her spike heels like a small boy on stilts, humpily with the high thin shoulders swaying precariously; him feeling as he watched her a big, great sadness of inevitability like a bugle’s Taps. But underneath this, more urgent and more understandable, the thick chokiness in his throat again as he looked over at Lorene who still sat alone serenely waiting, his blood beating in his eyes because he was free to go back there now.
Then as he got up, from beyond Maureen’s head and shoulders in the doorway, he heard the great door thud shut and the bar drop back into its brackets and then, suddenly, the powerful Brooklynese voice of Pvt Angelo Maggio in all its triumphant glory.
“Well what do you know?” it said, booming in a high thin treble that was a very peculiar sound. “Look who’s here. If it aint my old friend, compatriot, comrade in arms, and Mess Sergeant, Sgt Stark. Fancy meeting you here, of all places in the world. I bet you never thought you’d see old Angelo here, by god, tonight,” the voice accused triumphantly. “Wheres my boy Prewitt?”
“How the hell did you manage to make it into town with money?” Stark’s voice wanted to know.
“Ah,” Maggio’s voice smirked. “It was nothing. It was simple. Anything for a friend, anything for a friend.”
The two of them came through the doorway, an arm around each other’s neck half drunkenly, past Maureen. Maggio pinched her on the bottom deliciously and said, “Hello, my love!” and Maureen laughed and pinched his ear and said “Angelo my Romeo!” Maggio loosed his arm and bowed and Prew saw Mrs Kipfer beaming in at Angelo from the entryway. Stark pulled him back erect and they came on, Angelo waving happily at everybody he could see, the conquering hero come home.
“My god,” Angelo said drunkenly happily and put his other arm around Prew’s neck. “What is this, old home week? Looks like the goddam homecoming game at NYU. Nothin but Jews and Wops and Polacks.”
He pulled their heads together in front of him and whispered.
“I’m drunk, friends. Been drinkin champagne cocktails since eleven-thirty and am drunk. And happy. But dont tell Mothe